zig3ds allows you to develop applications for 3ds with only zig and no other system dependencies.

Usage

Must use zig version 2024.5.0-mach (0.13.0-dev.351+64ef45eb0)

This repo: zig build run:graphics/printing/hello-world (if citra is installed & in PATH)

Your own project:

1. Download example/ from this repo
2. Run: zig fetch --save git+https://github.com/pfgithub/zig3ds#main
3. Done!

Build your application with zig build, or run it with zig build run if citra is in your PATH. Output file is in zig-out/bin/sample.3dsx.

Adding libraries

zig3ds currently supports citro3d and citro2d. citro3d is required to use citro2d.

const citro3d_includer = zig3ds.CIncluder.find(zig3ds_dep, "citro3d");
const citro2d_includer = zig3ds.CIncluder.find(zig3ds_dep, "citro2d");

citro3d_includer.applyTo(&elf.root_module);
elf.linkLibrary(zig3ds_dep.artifact("citro3d"));
citro2d_includer.applyTo(&elf.root_module);
elf.linkLibrary(zig3ds_dep.artifact("citro2d"));

Known Issues

• Citro3d translate-c bindings cause compile error: ziglang/zig#16302
  • This can be worked around by only including citro3d/citro2d from C
• Zig doesn't seem to have an equivalent of -mtp=soft. This is probably bad?
• A bad patch is applied to libctru to disable its threadlocals because otherwise it doesn't compile. This patch breaks multithreaded use of any libctru functions that use path buffers. The error:

  • error: ld.lld: libctru.a(path_buf.o) has an STT_TLS symbol but doesn't have an SHF_TLS section
    

• 3dsx.ld specifies a bss alignment of 4, but lld wants align(8)

  • error: warning(link): unexpected LLD stderr:
    ld.lld: warning: address (0x159e88) of section .bss is not a multiple of alignment (64)
    

• -fno-sanitize=undefined is required to prevent a crash in graphics/printing/system-font and to prevent crashes on exit in all programs.
• both libgloss/libsysbase and newlib provide copies of the same functions. Which one is the right one? I chose newlib/libc:
  • libgloss/libsysbase/unlink.c defines _unlink_r to call devoptab_list[dev]->unlink_r()
  • newlib/libc/reent/unlinkr.c defines _unlink_r to call _unlink
• c++ files are supposed to be compiled with -fno-rtti -fno-exceptions -std=gnu++11
• From the command line, citra's keyboard just types 'CITRA' and presses button 2 every time.
  • Issue in zig build run:input/software-keyboard
  • Works fine in citra-qt
• Audio isn't playing in emulator?
  • Test on device audio/mic.3dsx

TODO Features

• Reduce usage of CIncluder, prefer lib.installHeadersDirectory + elf.linkLibrary instead.
• Tell zig that it's linking libc so std.heap.c_allocator and other things can be used
• Support smdh file generation
• Support tex3ds. Unfortunately, it depends on imagemagick which depends on libbzip2 & libjpeg & libpng & libtiff & zlib, and imagemagick already has a huge makefile
• Support emitting .cia files. This maybe requires cxitool and makerom.

Alternatives

zig-3ds also lets you use zig to compile for 3ds, but requires devkitPro be installed on your system.